UCLA officials also sliced the numbers a different way, coming up with a number-two ranking for public universities on the list, tied with Virginia and beat out by number one UC Berkeley, which came in at 20th overall.

The latest rankings put Princeton on top, Harvard in second, and Yale in third. The highest ranking L.A. school was Caltech at number 10.

Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a
young stringer, the New York Times.